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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26178106">la mouette</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor'>TheGoodDoctor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the ornithology anthology [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Religion, and you still get to hear about them, i STILL have Thoughts on the ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:28:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,534</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26178106</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicky calls late at night, between the woods and frozen lake.</p><p>Whose woods these are I think I know.   <br/>His house is in the village though;   <br/>He will not see me stopping here   <br/>To watch his woods fill up with snow.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the ornithology anthology [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901059</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>372</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>la mouette</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>a text message series sent recently<br/>sister: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ5zs2gW-GU">sangre de christo</a><br/>sister: me thinking about booker and nicky<br/>sister: being sad<br/>sister: it's just like "i'm sad. the world is dark and unknowable. i remember catholicism with you."<br/>me: aw sad</p><p>this may or may not make sense without reading <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25530934">l'albatros.</a> i'd recommend it; this takes place about halfway through that fic, but from the other side.</p><p>spoilers for content warnings:<br/>mention of booker's drinking himself to death. more explicitly, nicky has some Issues with the church and their stance on various things, but especially queerness.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He finds himself yet more unsettled over the course of December. It’s an itch at the back of his neck, underneath the skin, lodged in his spine between his head and his heart. Nicky knows the rough size and shape of it well enough, matching as it does his occasional habitual urge to be in amongst a congregation of the faithful with his voice turned up upon the heavens. He can’t scratch at it alone, and so perhaps he shall have to concede to Midnight Mass this year, to ease the one ache he can feasibly relieve.</p><p>He is electing, after all, to ignore the fact that religion alone will not settle him. He has become accustomed to Booker’s presence in the way that one becomes used to the top step of a familiar staircase, or one’s own foot; Nicky keeps turning to put weight on where Booker <em> ought </em> to be, and must swoop to catch himself as he stumbles into this void. They have, all four of them, made bad habits of one another over the long years. Breaking the habit has proven slightly more effort than it had appeared to be, months ago, when they left Booker on the riverbank in their fit of fury - a process rather longer than perhaps any of them had realised.</p><p>Joe pushes his shoulder gently into Nicky’s, late on Christmas Eve. Nile wants to do presents <em> tomorrow</em>, the heathen; it has been odd, to Nicky, to do Christmas at all, and then to do it in a way which is entirely incorrect, alien, and unfamiliar. Andy and Joe, of course, have never had reason to celebrate the season, and though Nicky and Booker have ever placed themselves <em> somewhere </em> on the Catholic spectrum, they could never muster the enthusiasm and drive to do even something small to mark the occasion with any degree of consistency. They used to, Nicky remembers: back when the world was young, and Booker was still Sebastien and Nicky himself was Nico, the two of them had gone to church almost regularly. Nicky had seen the wide-eyed, shellshocked edges of Booker back then; had seen the internal crises coming in time to prevent them; and had put aside his own disillusionment and distaste to sit beside Booker in silent solidarity through years of grating, uncomfortable self-righteousness because it made this lost-looking man look marginally less lost. Until, one sunny Sunday somewhere - central Europe, Nicky thinks, maybe Austria? - Booker had turned to him with his hands in his pockets as they meandered away from the Church and said, entirely without inflection beyond the banal and curious, “You hate this, don’t you?”</p><p>And Nicky had been too busy considering lying, or at least mitigating, and then finally admitting that <em> fuck, </em> yes, he has <em> hated </em> being trapped in church with <em> those people </em> on a semi-weekly basis - he had been preoccupied with the rush of blessed relief that he might be allowed to stop, and that Booker was, in response, only laughing - he hadn’t noticed, at the time, as he does now when he revisits the memory, that Booker’s amusement had maybe not entirely reached his eyes. Perhaps they have never known one another so well as they had thought: certainly the scale of Andy’s apathy towards the world and living in it had blindsided Nicky and Joe both, and the roiling mess of what she and Booker had lapsed into, and the extent to which Booker had fallen into his own personal, insular darkness had been…</p><p>Joe nudges him again, dark eyes turned wide upon him in concern. “<em>Habibi</em>,” he murmurs gently, his fingers sliding over the curl of Nicky’s hand and finding their usual, familiar place in the spaces left. Nicky squeezes gently and drops his head onto his lover’s shoulder. His eyes flutter shut and for a moment it is pleasant just to breathe in this space: to smell the curiously-spiced something that Andy has been teaching Nile to cook, occupying each others’ space in the tiny kitchen with familiarity usually born of many years’ practice; to listen to the horribly naff festive tunes emitting tinnily from Nile’s phone, perched precariously on top of the microwave; to exist in Joe’s space and hear his heartbeat and feel the blood thrumming under his skin, to be together, to be so close as to be almost one being. It’s familiar and grounding and Nicky adores the way he is allowed to sink into it, the way Joe lets him in every time, the way he reaches out first with a nudge or a word if he thinks that Nicky would benefit from his warm solidity. “Precious man,” Joe rumbles, “what may I do for you?”</p><p>Nicky shrugs loosely, curving his body slightly more into Joe’s space. “<em>Caro mio, </em> perhaps nothing.”</p><p>“Nothing at all?” Joe croons, smoothing a thumb down the side of Nicky’s face and curving the other way to entwine them yet further into an insular bubble. Nicky can still hear things frying on the stove, the music, Nile and Andy debating salt levels; behind him, the window is open over Lisbon to invite the sounds of traffic far below the flat, the coastal breeze washing gently around the apartment building and seabirds calling over the distant seas. It is tempting to allow Joe to draw him closer, snake his broad warm hands up the expanse of Nicky’s back and coil them together into one, the beast with two backs - but somewhere a seagull is screaming and crying over distant waves, and it sounds so terribly alone. <em> Alone, alone, all all alone, alone on a wide wide sea, </em> Booker’s voice says languidly, soft and directionless from the flat of his back on a sofa, reading aloud from a book held loosely above his head somewhere deep in Nicky’s memory, for some reason which now escapes him. <em> And never a saint took pity on my soul in agony. </em></p><p>Almost anything reminds him of Booker, now that he is out of reach, as if his brain has noticed the lack of him in his life and is inventing phantoms to make up the deficit. At first it had infuriated him, in the throes of his betrayed rage; these days, it makes Nicky want to weep. Weep for himself, and Joe and Andy and Nile, and for poor, stupid, maddening Booker. The <em> bastard. </em></p><p>Joe’s hand guides Nicky’s eyes to meet his own, sensing in the lines of his body and the tension of his wrists that his attention is escaping, floating out to join the seabirds skimming the waves in the darkness and chasing after the ghost that is forever upon the horizon of his subconscious. “Really nothing, hmm?” he inquires gently, and Nicky shrugs apologetically. He shouldn’t have any more cause to fuss after their missing piece than usual, and yet he does. Perhaps it is how Nile goes quiet and drawn in quiet moments, when the others are not obviously observing her and she forgets her cheer, and how her absent, mourning family reminds him so viscerally of his own. Perhaps it’s the relentless family-orientation of the season that has him feeling the lack of togetherness more than he ought. Perhaps they were wrong to send Booker away.</p><p>He tilts his head at Joe and offers a curl of lip that might be a smile, were it not so self-effacing and almost entirely without happiness. “Tis the season,” he murmurs and Joe smiles more warmly back, hands rubbing prickling warmth into his skin and leaving stars in their wake.</p><p>“Will you go to church this year?” he asks with his usual preternatural sense of what Nicky is thinking or feeling or might possibly need.</p><p>“I think so.”</p><p>Joe hums in easy acceptance and Nicky ducks his head so that Joe can press a kiss to his forehead like a blessing. He always does, before Nicky steps over the threshold of such places, and Nicky holds it in his heart like a ward, an apotropaic eye repelling evil from his person. “Shall I try to hurry dinner, then, or is it too dangerous?” he murmurs against Nicky’s forehead, and Nicky huffs a laugh.</p><p>“Boss,” he calls across the space, “how long ‘til dinner?”</p><p>Andy and Nile turn to face them, frowning in thought, and Nicky has to fight the deep-down urge to pull away from Joe and hide himself from their gaze. <em> This </em> is why he doesn’t go to church very often, damn it all, he <em> hates </em> this instinct in himself - but Joe keeps his arms in place around him, and Andy and Nile don’t so much as blink at their behaviour, and Nicky can let the moment go. “You going somewhere?” Andy says dryly, and she has a point - they’re an insular set. It’s hardly like he has other friends and family to see.</p><p>He shrugs like it’s nothing, like it’s not an emotional weight just to try it but just as heavy not to try it at all. “Thought I’d check in with the Man upstairs. See if anything’s changed.”</p><p>Andy hums, much like Joe had - contemplative, not disapproving, but turning over the wisdom of the idea. She doesn’t understand his need to go: sees it as returning to prod an old wound to see if it still hurts and <em> knowing </em> with absolute certainty beforehand that it will. But Andy is many things, and sentimental is not one of them; she is Ozymandias, king of kings, and beside her, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. She takes her comfort from the entropic, changing nature of life, and the fact that, like all things, this too shall pass. But Nicky finds a measure of relief in that which resists, and remains resolutely as it is over the long stretches of time. He remembers little from his youth, and much of what he has retained centres upon his own beloved Yusuf, but there is something deep within his bones which hears psalms and masses and latin learned by rote and pricks its ears up, leans forward, and yearns to sing back.</p><p>But Nile just smiles brightly at him. “Oh, that sounds nice! We can serve up anytime.”</p><p>Andy makes a disapproving noise. “We cannot. The flavours still haven’t-”</p><p>“If Nicky needs to go out,” Nile says firmly, holding up a hand to stem the flow, “then we will serve dinner in time for him to go.”</p><p>And Andy - backs down. Nicky grins, feeling the rumble of Joe’s laughter through all the points where their bodies meet. “<em>Shukran,</em>” Joe says, voice warm and sending tingles down Nicky's spine. “We can never persuade her to do anything.”</p><p>Nile rolls her eyes and huffs, trying not to be pleased. “<em>Afwan,</em>” she replies, juggling unfamiliar vowel sounds and sarcasm with - not ease, but enough proficiency to delight Joe. Her languages are coming along well, the three of them peppering foreign words into English conversations as a sort of challenge, and Nicky likes the idea of giving her these little pieces of them all. She never quite believes them, though, when they say that Andy concedes much easier to Nile than the rest of them.</p><p>And he hasn’t had the courage to ask if she’d like to learn French. There are some wounds even he won’t prod.</p><p>Andy glowers at them all without much venom. “You’re going soft,” Joe tells her as their paths cross in and out of the kitchen; he dances away from her passing punch, crowing with delight, as she washes her hands of this dinner and he goes to help Nile serve up in her place.</p><p>Nicky’s still smiling gently about it as he and Andy clear the table of their files and dossiers, the debris of their current assignment, and he finds Andy looking at him, assessing him, as they do so. She doesn’t ask if his solo visit is advisable, and for that he is grateful: he can’t be sure how he ought to answer, and it is somewhat pleasing to know that she respects him enough to allow him his own mistakes. He shrugs one shoulder in response, trying to convey at least some of that; she tilts her head and leaves him to his choices.</p>
<hr/><p>Which is how he finds himself alone in the corner of the Sé, wishing that any of them, absolutely <em> any </em> of them, had said firmly <em> you know what, Nicky, maybe don’t go. </em> His family has gone all supportive, at precisely the wrong moment.</p><p>The church is dark about the edges, tunnelling his vision onto the hazy, unfocussed visions of saints passing before his eyes: the Madonna, distant and weeping over empty arms and a bleeding heart as her child is taken and paraded before the masses; angels with bland disinterest turning their faces from the sucking murmur of the crowd; the Lord hanging high above them all, unreachable and alone. Nicky feels trapped - as though he ought to stand before them all and tell them to <em> stop, stop, can’t you see what we all are? </em> - but the darkness is around him, the exits obscured by his fading, failing eyes, he’s <em> trapped here, </em> with these hypocrites calling for salvation and community and he is alone, so alone.</p><p>He has never felt alone in the eyes of God before.</p><p>Nicky staggers to his feet during a hymn and makes a break for the exit, almost falling over his own feet in his desperation to be far from the cool marble and serene-painted stone. It is impossible to be there when he feels so singled-out in the darkness and so disconnected from the other worshippers. Before, there had always been the feeling that, despite their cruelty and ignorance and want of care - despite <em> everything, </em> and there had always been a lot of <em> everything </em> - he and they had been somehow the same. That the place in which they stood before God had been open enough for a marginal place to find itself for him. There had been a community, and it would have him if he would only denounce Joe or at least not mention him for the night. And sometimes, his soul would desire him to find that place once more before returning to the light of his life outside of the church. He had never expected that it might be closed to him.</p><p>Nicky wanders the streets absently, hands lodged firmly in the light jacket which is all that is required in Portuguese Decembers. It feels like it should be colder than it is; like it should be darker, too. If he is to feel cast out at Christmastime then it should be into the frostbitten darkness like the little matchstick girl, and not into a balmy amber-lit metropolis. He imagines himself wandering a forest in the snow, tramping through the drifts with a gentle crunch. The snow would be star-coloured in the reflected night-light and glowing oddly in a path through the trees, but brighter than this would be the light of the cottage at the path’s end. Now, <em> that’s </em> amber light, spilling warm and welcoming over the cold hard ground; more so, and Nicky unconsciously picks up the pace as if walking towards this lovely vision and not along a wide and empty boulevard near the city centre. Within would be his beloved Joe, waiting in the warm to ensconce him in his arms and whisper beautiful, heartfelt words; and with him Andy, and by Nicky’s side would be -</p><p>Booker.</p><p>Nicky expects him so instinctively that he almost turns to look, stumbling to a halt before a neon-lit <em> lavanderia. </em> He has, without his better knowledge, been imagining Bavaria, nearly a hundred years ago; the snow in the woods and the voices turned up in familiar tunes with foreign lyrics and that feeling of odd unsettling calm that had swept through Nicky. Not for love of the church, nor for an abundance of seasonal feeling but - </p><p>But because Booker had stood at his shoulder, and they had faced down their grief and rage as one.</p><p>He hadn’t realised how much that had meant to him, at the time.</p>
<hr/><p>Booker must only take a few seconds to pick up but they stretch in Nicky’s experience into hours of sitting hunched by the windowsill in the flat, repeatedly running his thumbnail along the pad of his index finger and wondering if this is a good idea. It probably isn’t. He can’t help himself. Booker’s probably asleep. Nicky wants <em> desperately </em> to wake him up.</p><p>“Morning,” Booker says, dry and unhurried, and Nicky suddenly remembers that this is Nile’s phone. Booker might not want to speak to him at all.</p><p>“Morning,” he replies carefully, creeping into the conversation. <em> Lord, </em> but it’s a relief to hear him well. After Andy had told them - that he had - well. He swallows that down, maintaining cautious neutrality. “I wasn’t sure if you would be awake.”</p><p>“<em>Nicky,</em>” Booker breathes, and there’s an odd sort of crumpling noise. Nicky hopes he hasn’t dropped something important. And also that he won’t hang up: it’s hard to say, in the face of such shock, whether or not his voice had been received positively. If only he could <em> see </em> Booker, then - but no.</p><p>“Hi,” he says, shaking his head against that thought. He can feel his carefully curated calm sliding gradually out of reach, helpless in the face of the lightness that comes with hearing this man, his brother, just a phone call away.</p><p>He also can’t think of anything intelligent to say.</p><p>“How - how are you?” Nicky tries, wincing afterward at the awkwardness, the inanity, the way that he’s never really asked that of Booker before. They’ve lived in each other’s pockets long enough to presume complete knowledge of one another; Nicky has always just known, before.</p><p>He had thought he had, anyway.</p><p>“-good,” Booker says, like the words are an effort. “Yeah, uh, fine. How are you?”</p><p>“Good,” Nicky manages in response. How strange, to discuss their health so blandly, now, after years of easy familial intimacy and then months of radio silence. It is, by turns, too formal and too much. “Have you got any - plans? For Christmas?”</p><p>“I - I’ve just come out of church,” Booker says, voice still stilted and slightly unsure. “Midnight Mass.”</p><p>“Right,” Nicky says, and then cannot think of how to reply. He wants terribly for Booker to say something, just so that Nicky might hear his voice, but he - he surely will want to ask Nicky <em> why, </em> in the face of a terrible sadness that had drunk Booker to death, he and Joe and Andy and Nile had pushed him further out into the cold. And Nicky will not be able to answer him. In response to Booker’s recriminations, he will be entirely alone, and silent, and ashamed.</p><p>“Did you - um. Go? To Mass this year?” Booker is edgy and cautious, and Nicky realises he has been silent for too long. He draws his feet up onto the chair with him and wraps an arm about his knees, gazing out over the city and the sea. Some gulls are still wheeling and calling, their white bellies lit up by the city’s light pollution as they make their lonely swooping dives within the great anonymous flock.</p><p>Nicky hums, watching the dyed-amber birds cry into the night. “For a while. Did it - help you?” He cannot ask about Booker’s - what had happened. He hopes Booker knows, can read the question for what it is: <em> are you well now? Will you live? Will I see you again? My heart is damaged by the very idea that you might not be alive in the world and that I would not know of it at once. Do you know that?</em></p><p>“Yeah, actually.” Booker’s voice is now pleasantly calm; Nicky thinks that at least some of his message had made it down the line and, more pleasingly, that Booker is telling him the truth. “It’s the same as it was, you know? And confession is - useful, I think. But you could maybe just get a therapist.” Nicky huffs a surprised laugh, pressing his hand over his mouth to quiet the noise. He doesn’t want to disturb the others’ sleep, but more than that - this conversation with Booker is entirely his own, just now. He need not give up the line to anyone else, or explain his actions to Joe, or feel guilty about the disapproving acceptance Joe would give him as a matter of course. He will not wake them, and risk its loss. “The priest is nice,” Booker adds, and Nicky can hear the smile. “I think you’d like him.”</p><p>“Oh, modern, is he?” Nicky responds dryly, and can well imagine Booker grinning at that. He’s born the brunt of many of Nicky’s tirades against some of the <em> less </em> modern priests they’ve met, and deserves the amusement. “I didn’t stay for the whole Mass,” Nicky admits after a pause. “It - it <em> wasn’t </em>the same as it was. I have forgotten how to go to church on my own.”</p><p>Booker is silent for a moment. “Because you used to live in a monastery?” he asks, confusion laced throughout his words, and Nicky had so hoped he wouldn’t have to say it out loud.</p><p>“Because,” he says with eyes screwed shut and nail digging deep into his finger, “I used to go with you.”</p><p>There is a longer silence, in which Nicky regrets saying so, regrets calling at all, regrets going to church in the first place. This was a mistake, all a mistake - </p><p>“Oh,” Booker says, quiet and understated and rather like he’s on the verge of tears.</p><p>“I am sorry,” Nicky says tightly, meaning it deeply and viscerally. Who is he, to burden Booker, who is so alone with the weight of his own worries? The man will surely not want more, and certainly not Nicky’s, when Nicky had cast him out in the first place. “I did not mean to-” Only now he has to close his mouth on an embarrassing wave of emotion, washing out of his words and down the line.</p><p>“Don’t be sorry,” Booker says quickly. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“I miss you,” Nicky says, entirely without meaning to. It is simply the only excuse he has. “I miss you all the time, Booker.”</p><p>“I miss you too,” Booker says, voiced thick and choking. Nicky has to twist his lips against tears and blink furiously at the ocean on the horizon. This is the only excuse that the five of them have: that they love one another. Neither well nor wisely, but like it is all that they were ever put on the earth to do. “All of you. I was thinking of you when you called-” and Nicky swallows against the lump in his throat to know that, miles apart, their thoughts still run on the same lines, “-and Nile - is she very festive?”</p><p>“Horribly,” Nicky manages, choking on a laugh just because Booker is <em> here, </em> at the other end of the phone line, and prepared to commiserate and tease and huff in tearful amusement back.</p><p>“Yeah, I guessed so. And I was thinking about Andy and Joe’s snowball fight in Bavaria-”</p><p>“-the year I annotated your Dante and gave it back to you as a gift,” Nicky says with slightly forced ease. He is electing, in the face of his options, to be delighted that Booker was thinking of that very same Christmas as he had been, rather than to be crushed by the horrible devastating loneliness of simultaneous nostalgia for togetherness, hundreds of miles apart. “Do you still have that?”</p><p>“I think I burned it,” Booker muses, apparently deciding likewise; Nicky laughs softly, and allows himself simply to enjoy it.</p><p>A bell chimes, tinny and distant through the phone line, and Nicky checks the oven clock and translates it to French time by habit. “You should go to bed,” he chides gently. It’s late, and Booker must take care of himself.</p><p>There is shuffling at the other end, and a grunt. “Bloody freezing,” Booker grumbles and Nicky makes a tutting sound with his tongue. He thinks his mother had used to do that, when he had come home as a grubby, grazed, and grass-stained child with tales of adventure tripping from his tongue.</p><p>“If you’re outside freezing your balls off I shall be very unimpressed,” Nicky says warningly.</p><p>“Go to bed, you old woman,” Booker tells him, all mock-crossness and lurking grin, and Nicky beams at the seabirds. “<em> Joyeux Noël, mon cher ami,” </em> Booker says softly.</p><p>“<em>Buon Natale, mio caro amico,</em>” Nicky murmurs in reply, and ends the call.</p>
<hr/><p>Joe makes a noise like a disrupted cat when Nicky creeps into bed with him, and then purrs happily as soon as he makes it within arm’s reach and permits Joe to pull him close to his chest. “Mm, you’re cold,” Joe tells him sleepily.</p><p>Nicky pulls the blankets around them both and presses closer. “I was sitting by the window for a while,” he says.</p><p>Joe makes a questioning noise, eyes shut and face pressed into Nicky’s shoulder.</p><p>Nicky threads his fingers through his curls gently, smoothing them away and scratching lightly with his fingernails soothingly. “I spoke to Booker,” he whispers, unsure. He’s never usually unsure about Joe; can read him well enough, now, to know him inside and out. But Booker - he had presumed to know Booker, too, and in the face of all that… He doesn’t know what Joe will do now. Joe had been so angry, so hurt, so inconsolable, but Nicky won't go behind his back about anything.</p><p>But Joe just hums and snuggles into him, warming their blanket cocoon admirably. “Yeah? How’s he?” he inquires sleepily, and Nicky comes to the somewhat heartbreaking realisation that Joe, whilst he is sleepy and safe and warm, forgets that Booker isn’t there. Here, in this precious space where the two of them are as one, Joe subconsciously makes all as it was and all how he wishes it would be: the five of them, together, as a family.</p><p>Nicky closes his eyes against a wash of fondness and sorrow and presses a kiss to Joe’s temple. “I think he’ll be okay,” he says, gently and gratefully and entirely honestly. </p><p>Joe hums happily and Nicky curls in to sleep - but, with his eyes closed and in the safe encompassing darkness, the road in the snow swims up before him. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” Booker’s voice intones beside him. Nicky does not turn to look, but knows that if he did, he would see Booker in his best suit and hat and boots, with the handle of a cane hooked over one arm and both hands shoved in his pockets. His face would be turned up to the dark night sky as if reading the poem on the underside of the clouds as they pace evenly through the snow from the church to the cottage, that Christmas in southern Germany. “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep,” he says, voice smooth and calm as Nicky’s memory grows heavy and he slips into oblivion. “And miles to go before I sleep.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>my literary references:<br/>sangre de christo by vian izak and davide rossi<br/>the rime of the ancient mariner by samuel taylor coleridge<br/>stopping by woods on a snowy evening by robert frost<br/>three farmers on their way to a dance by august sander<br/>ozymandias by percy bysshe shelley</p><p>to paraphrase the immortal words of alan davis: christmas before hallowe'en. what a ****.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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